


Against Temperance

by bmouse



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3392006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Battle is often an argument against temperance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Against Temperance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyc/gifts).



> Fair warning: the working title to this was 'sad drunk elves.' I sure hope by this point there's been a hundred fics about these two being total wrecks together, but anyway here's mine.

A handful of days after the battle and Thranduil Oropherion had had enough of collecting bodies, distributing provisions among the surviving Men (Bard's grim countenance softening when his children crumbed _lemmas_ into their dirty clothes) and anything approaching diplomacy. A pack of grimy, hard-eyed dwarves had rolled a charred cart full of gold into his camp and he was finished. 

Thus finished, he had an acute need for a good drink and nothing available to him here would suffice. Dale barely had well-water and even Dain's barrels of piss-ale were downed and dry with whatever they were all doing inside that sulfurous pile of stinking stone. The funerals, probably. 

Apparently that brat Thorin and his other green sprig had also managed to get themselves killed. So much for the fabled line of Durin. To engender this foul mess and not live to clean it up, wasn’t that just like a dwarf? The very thought of it was enough to make him sneer.

It was almost unfair. Why was Lord Aule allowed to keep his wretched little experiments if it was impossible for them to do anything right or have fate turn in their favor? But nevermind, he had his own matters to deal with.

His people were assembled, the former food-wagons were bristling with the wounded and the dead (as if he'd leave a single lowly Silvan to decorate this Manwe-forsaken plain) and with a last distrustful look at the Mountain, as if it could conspire to inconvenience him further, he gave the order to move out. He would return to bargain for the gems of course, but he could see that this time the dwarves would give in. This had broken them, however briefly, from their love of treasure and he had waited for the necklace through Smaug and could wait a little longer. His thirst could not. 

When they arrived at the gates of the palace they were exhausted and though to mortal eyes perhaps much the same _he_ was keenly aware that they were not so splendid or so numerous as when they’d left. He had only expected a show of force, after all. He’d been a fool.

The final indignity was that he had to ride a horse, a common horse for the first time in three hundred years. He had fought to the last sunset, til torchlight and cries in the dark and still hadn’t killed enough orcs to repay what had been taken from him. Even now his hands itched for his sword. For so long it had been an ornament to him, one of many, but now it sprang easily into his hand - as if a part of him had languished all this time and was glad to find purpose. 

What an uncivilized pleasure it was to cleave flesh from flesh, to separate bone from inferior bone, but he found that he had missed it. Maybe he ought to start raiding with the patrols again, as he had done when his youngest was a child. When had that changed? When had _Legolas_ begun to be sent out to cleave the filth from the forest, when once his father had swung this very sword to keep him from seeing such danger? 

But perhaps temperance would serve, here if not elsewhere. What was done was done. His kingdom was dark, his son had left, and it would be pointless to exchange the crutch of one red liquid for another.

In the unloading no one noticed that the king had stopped by one of the wagons and carried something up to the storerooms. Something wrapped in a tattered blanket, trailing ragged green clothes and matted red hair. 

\- - - - - - - - - - - -

The first thing Tauriel knew was wine between her lips. With it she briefly remembered how it was to feel again and briefly she was furious. Furious with her body for still being whole, furious with her tongue for the way it blithely went on living and tasting and telling her this was the best wine that had ever passed her lips. 

"...water…” she croaked. 

Large cold hands propped up her chin and a different liquid trickled down her throat and out of the corners of her mouth. Too fast - as if the person holding the cup could not keep it steady. 

"I'd gladly immerse the whole of you in it but I suspect you'd do something dramatic, like drown.” said a familiar imperious voice from above.

Familiar, though its cadence was off; slowed and almost slurred. She opened her eyes and gasped weakly because the first thing she saw was the scar; the twisted mouth, the gouged and ruined cheek. Above them one boiled white eye and one cold blue one regarded her. 

_So there_ is _a glamour... Even the Sindar cannot heal from dragon fire._

_He must truly be drunk to let it slip._ Of course the guards gossiped about the King’s only known vice and sometimes he would be too bright-eyed and keen in council. But no one had ever come close enough to offer proof.

They stared at each other, the filthy former Captain and the old King. And again Tauriel cursed her senses, because even _this_ was not enough. She couldn’t keep her mind _here_. Awake, it reminded her of what she’d worked herself to collapse healing the half-alive and stacking the dead to forget: the way the blood had seeped into his nails and how his dirty hair had coiled among the frozen dirt, the weight of the rune stone that was still in her pocket. 

"Give me..." she whispered "...give me the wine back."

King Thranduil's ruined face seemed to grow coldly triumphant, then melancholy. The living eye softened. He took her hand and helped her wrap it around the neck of the bottle. 

 

~


End file.
